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There are already arguments being made (though on a small scale) here in the U.S. for the acceptance of polygamous and incestual relationships using the acceptance of same-sex marriage as they basis of their argument. Parts of Europe have abolished the penalties for bestiality.

First, pointing out that incest has been legal for siblings in some cultures in this context implies acceptance of the practice. Notice that you have not stated that you oppose it. .

You have neither defined incest nor stated that you opposed it. All you have done is pat yourself on the back in the false belief that same sex marriage is the foundation for polygamy and now apparently incest.

If two men can marry, and adopt, or two women, why not a man and two women? Or three? Or four? Why not have communal adoptions? After all, the Mansons called themselves a family, too. You keep moving the goalposts to where you want them, but you aren't the only one who wants to move them, and the others have no compunctions about knocking them down entirely.

Why is it that you claim to trust the free market with the health of the nation but even with a track record of practicality limiting the number of nontraditional relationships you still want to control it with the force of government.

As I understand it, there are siblings who have married in the US. They go live someplace anonymous like California and hold forth to the community as married and no one ever questions it because they are heterosexuals. Of course, given the gay male community's habit of cloning, very few people would even wonder if two almost identical men in a relationship were siblings, they would simply assume they were narcissists. In any event, my opinion of this handful of people is irrelevant. That doesn't mean that I don't think it's icky. It's the ick factor, and not the law, which prevents more of this.

As for polygamy, I simply don't care. Polygamy is a traditional form of marriage from Mesopotamia to China to the New World. The fact that the Europeans didn't openly practice it or practice it the same way that the Hebrews practiced it isn't really convincing as the engine of our success as a culture.

In fact, if polygamy were to take root in America and Europe right now, we might be able stem the tide of third world invaders.

I know this question was not meant for me, but just had to butt in here.

Incest to me means having sex or an unusual attraction to a member of your own blood in your immediate family.

I say that, which actually makes me recoil in horror ... because I think in some states long ago, or even still now ... allow you to marry first cousins or even (Mercy, if so inclined) to marry your own *grandfather, grand-daughter* or whatever!

No, it's pointing out that when you can't win on the facts, you try to change the argument.

You have neither defined incest nor stated that you opposed it. All you have done is pat yourself on the back in the false belief that same sex marriage is the foundation for polygamy and now apparently incest.

Define incest, it would be a good place to start.

For the purpose of this discussion, incest will refer to marriage or sexual behavior between persons who share grandparents, i.e., first cousins or closer. And if incest isn't a problem, why should abortion law require an exemption?

Originally Posted by Novaheart

Why is it that you claim to trust the free market with the health of the nation but even with a track record of practicality limiting the number of nontraditional relationships you still want to control it with the force of government.

A political party using the courts to strike down laws that have majority support is not a function of free markets, but the opposite, coercive government overriding the free decisions made by the people. It is you who is demanding government manipulation of marriage laws in order to impose gay norms on the majority.

As I understand it, there are siblings who have married in the US. They go live someplace anonymous like California and hold forth to the community as married and no one ever questions it because they are heterosexuals. Of course, given the gay male community's habit of cloning, very few people would even wonder if two almost identical men in a relationship were siblings, they would simply assume they were narcissists. In any event, my opinion of this handful of people is irrelevant. That doesn't mean that I don't think it's icky. It's the ick factor, and not the law, which prevents more of this.

If it were the "ick" factor alone, that would make this a subjective matter, but you ignore the medical problems associated with inbreeding, and which have formed the basis for anti-incest laws in western culture. Laws against incest are based upon sound medical reasons.

As for polygamy, I simply don't care. Polygamy is a traditional form of marriage from Mesopotamia to China to the New World. The fact that the Europeans didn't openly practice it or practice it the same way that the Hebrews practiced it isn't really convincing as the engine of our success as a culture.

So, when you argued that gay marriage would not lead to polygamy, and that those who arguedthat it would were paranoid, because there were compelling reasons againstit, you were just blowing smoke in order to make the next incremental advance of your agenda? Nice to see that your honesty was feigned. However, let's revisit those arguments. Polygamy would have horrific consequences for our culture. The surplus males who have no marital prospects become fodder for high risk acts. Polygamous cultures are far more violent for that reason. And the effect on women, who become commodities, destroys their chances for advancement. The effect on children raised communally is equally negative, as the increase in non-parental adults decreases security (physically, emotionally and financially).

In fact, if polygamy were to take root in America and Europe right now, we might be able stem the tide of third world invaders.

If polygamy were to take root in the west, we wouldn't have to stem the tide of third world invaders. We'd be third worlders ourselves.

So you didn't say that there is no difference between adults and children biologically? I bet there are several here that can dispute that.

Is that old thread still here somewhere?

I know exactly what I said without looking because I habitually tell the truth. I explained the meaning of the statement to you twice and that is sufficient. Obviously doing it again will not remedy anything, because you are either incapable of understanding a scientific statement or you are a liar because you think it's damning to me. I am give to believe the latter.

For the purpose of this discussion, incest will refer to marriage or sexual behavior between persons who share grandparents, i.e., first cousins or closer. And if incest isn't a problem, why should abortion law require an exemption?

I've always understood the incest exception in abortion to be designed around father on daughter incest which is presumably rape as well. As for first cousin marriages, you're stepping on quite a few toes of the mainstream descendants of American colonial culture as well as ethnic-Europeans.

Originally Posted by Odysseus

A political party using the courts to strike down laws that have majority support is not a function of free markets, but the opposite, coercive government overriding the free decisions made by the people. It is you who is demanding government manipulation of marriage laws in order to impose gay norms on the majority.

JUstice rarely emerges from consensus in a mob. It was not a popular vote which ended legal discrimination against blacks and jews, it was coercive government.

Originally Posted by Odysseus

If it were the "ick" factor alone, that would make this a subjective matter, but you ignore the medical problems associated with inbreeding, and which have formed the basis for anti-incest laws in western culture. Laws against incest are based upon sound medical reasons.

I have never seen anything which supports what you are saying here. Everything I have read says that a rudimentary understanding of genetics by late 19th Century scientists was crafted to a support a changing attitude towards cousin marriage.

√In Paris in 1876 a 31-year-old banker named Albert took an 18-year-old named Bettina as his wife. Both were Rothschilds, and they were cousins. According to conventional notions about inbreeding, their marriage ought to have been a prescription for infertility and enfeeblement.
In fact, Albert and Bettina went on to produce seven children, and six of them lived to be adults. Moreover, for generations the Rothschildfamily had been inbreeding almost as intensively as European royalty, without apparent ill effect. Despite his own limited gene pool, Albert, for instance, was an outdoorsman and the seventh person ever to climb the Matterhorn. The American du Ponts practiced the same strategy of cousin marriage for a century. Charles Darwin, the grandchild of first cousins, married a first cousin. So did Albert Einstein.
In our lore, cousin marriages are unnatural, the province of hillbillies and swamp rats, not Rothschilds and Darwins. In the United States they are deemed such a threat to mental health that 31 states have outlawed first-cousin marriages. This phobia is distinctly American, a heritage of early evolutionists with misguided notions about the upward march of human societies. Their fear was that cousin marriages would cause us to breed our way back to frontier savagery—or worse. "You can't marry your first cousin," a character declares in the 1982 play Brighton Beach Memoirs. "You get babies with nine heads."
So when a team of scientists led by Robin L. Bennett, a genetic counselor at the University of Washington and the president of the National Society of Genetic Counselors, announced that cousin marriages are not significantly riskier than any other marriage, it made the front page of The New York Times. The study, published in the Journal of Genetic Counseling last year, determined that children of first cousins face about a 2 to 3 percent higher risk of birth defects than the population at large. To put it another way, first-cousin marriages entail roughly the same increased risk of abnormality that a woman undertakes when she gives birth at 41 rather than at 30. Banning cousin marriages makes about as much sense, critics argue, as trying to ban childbearing by older women.
But the nature of cousin marriage is far more surprising than recent publicity has suggested. A closer look reveals that moderate inbreeding has always been the rule, not the exception, for humans. Inbreeding is also commonplace in the natural world, and contrary to our expectations, some biologists argue that this can be a very good thing. It depends in part on the degree of inbreeding.

I know exactly what I said without looking because I habitually tell the truth. I explained the meaning of the statement to you twice and that is sufficient. Obviously doing it again will not remedy anything, because you are either incapable of understanding a scientific statement or you are a liar because you think it's damning to me. I am give to believe the latter.

I've always understood the incest exception in abortion to be designed around father on daughter incest which is presumably rape as well. As for first cousin marriages, you're stepping on quite a few toes of the mainstream descendants of American colonial culture as well as ethnic-Europeans.

JUstice rarely emerges from consensus in a mob. It was not a popular vote which ended legal discrimination against blacks and jews, it was coercive government.

I have never seen anything which supports what you are saying here. Everything I have read says that a rudimentary understanding of genetics by late 19th Century scientists was crafted to a support a changing attitude towards cousin marriage.

√In Paris in 1876 a 31-year-old banker named Albert took an 18-year-old named Bettina as his wife. Both were Rothschilds, and they were cousins. According to conventional notions about inbreeding, their marriage ought to have been a prescription for infertility and enfeeblement.
In fact, Albert and Bettina went on to produce seven children, and six of them lived to be adults. Moreover, for generations the Rothschildfamily had been inbreeding almost as intensively as European royalty, without apparent ill effect. Despite his own limited gene pool, Albert, for instance, was an outdoorsman and the seventh person ever to climb the Matterhorn. The American du Ponts practiced the same strategy of cousin marriage for a century. Charles Darwin, the grandchild of first cousins, married a first cousin. So did Albert Einstein.
In our lore, cousin marriages are unnatural, the province of hillbillies and swamp rats, not Rothschilds and Darwins. In the United States they are deemed such a threat to mental health that 31 states have outlawed first-cousin marriages. This phobia is distinctly American, a heritage of early evolutionists with misguided notions about the upward march of human societies. Their fear was that cousin marriages would cause us to breed our way back to frontier savagery—or worse. "You can't marry your first cousin," a character declares in the 1982 play Brighton Beach Memoirs. "You get babies with nine heads."
So when a team of scientists led by Robin L. Bennett, a genetic counselor at the University of Washington and the president of the National Society of Genetic Counselors, announced that cousin marriages are not significantly riskier than any other marriage, it made the front page of The New York Times. The study, published in the Journal of Genetic Counseling last year, determined that children of first cousins face about a 2 to 3 percent higher risk of birth defects than the population at large. To put it another way, first-cousin marriages entail roughly the same increased risk of abnormality that a woman undertakes when she gives birth at 41 rather than at 30. Banning cousin marriages makes about as much sense, critics argue, as trying to ban childbearing by older women.
But the nature of cousin marriage is far more surprising than recent publicity has suggested. A closer look reveals that moderate inbreeding has always been the rule, not the exception, for humans. Inbreeding is also commonplace in the natural world, and contrary to our expectations, some biologists argue that this can be a very good thing. It depends in part on the degree of inbreeding.

So they found a family that practices cousin incest and doesn't have birth defects. I can point to one large family that married their cousins and do have congenital deformities-European royal families. There are the Hapsburgs, with their missing chins, and the hemophilia that has resulted from the British royal family marrying their cousins in Germany and Russia, among a few examples.